Lindy Morrison, Robert Forster, Grant McLennan, John Willsteed and Amanda Brown of the Go-Betweens. Photograph: EMI
TRACEY Thorn first met Lindy Morrison backstage at the Lyceum Theatre in London on March 31, 1983. Thorn was only 20 then, still a student. The Marine Girls, the band she was in at the time, were supporting Orange Juice that night. “I was terrified and out of my depth,” Thorn recalls in the opening pages of her new book My Rock ’n’ Roll Friend.
Also on the bill that night was the Australian band The Go-Betweens, one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the decade, but one that would find success frustratingly elusive. As Thorn sat in the dressing room, the door opened and the Go-Betweens drummer Lindy Morrison walked in asking to borrow some lipstick at the top of her voice. Older, noisier, more self-assured, Thorn was enthralled. “You looked like confidence ran in your veins,” she writes of that first encounter.